Signs of Multilingualism at Religious Places in Surabaya: A Linguistic Landscape Study

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This paper aims to present the languages used as public signs at the places of worship in Surabaya. The area is selected for its multilingual society. The data is in the forms of photos of outdoor and indoor signs and is taken from ten outstanding religious places in the city namely two mosques, two churches, two Chinese temples (klenteng), two Hindu temples (pura), and two Buddhist temples (vihara). Three hundred and eighty six public signs are collected. As stated by Landry and Bourhis (1997) the collected data is then analyzed based on the landscape linguistic theory. The results demonstrate that the languages as public signs found in the ten places of worship vary, i.e., Indonesian, Balinese, Javanese, Madurese, Malay, English, Chinese, Arabic, Pli language, Latin language, German, French, Dutch and Japanese. However, Indonesian remains the most used language at mosques, churches, and Buddhist temples. However, Chinese language is the most frequently used at Chinese temples. Meanwhile, Indonesian and Balinese language almost have the same position at Hindu temples.